Promoting PPACA with ‘bros and hoes’

By Kathryn Mayer

It’s getting worse.

I’m talking about the cool ads coming from Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado Education to promote PPACA. Now that they’ve dealt with bros, they’ve moved on to the hoes — no, seriously.

The latest batch targets someone just like me: A Gen Y Colorado woman. And as part of their target audience I am completely appalled — because they address us as cheap morons by selling casual sex. (Speaking of morons, their website, by the way, is called Doyougotinsurance.com? Don’t even get me started.)

My fav ad features the nice pairing of Susie and Nate — two crazy kids who are “hot to trot” (that’s coming from the ad, not me, by the way), with the tagline “Let’s get physical.”

Susie is holding a packet of birth control pills, smiling big and giving a thumbs up. What’s on Susie’s mind?

“OMG, he’s hot! Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers,” reads the ad.

Other new ones include ladies doing shotskis together (shots on a ski—get it? Because we’re in Colorado.). It reads: “Shotskis keep up happy. Flu shots keep us healthy. Saving money on flu shots leaves us more money for fun shots.”

Well done, marketing geniuses.

(Meanwhile, there’s no mention in the ads if the law also will cover STDs, stomach pumps or a rehab stay.)

Honestly, I don’t know what’s worse — that this is the perception people have of this generation, or that offering carefree sex is the only way they can think of to promote PPACA. But hey, at least the campaign is getting one thing right: their target audience. Without millennial enrollment and support, the law will fail. But yeah, I’m pretty sure this is how you go about offending, not encouraging, them.

Either way, PPACA still has big problems. The website is stumbles along a month and a half in, enrollment numbers are estimated at about 3 percent of these objectives, and plan cancellations keep on coming.

Cool!

You know what else is cool? Obama’s new approval ratings: A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday shows 54 percent of Americans disapprove of the job President Obama is doing, while 39 percent approve, his lowest numbers since taking office.

That’s about the same approval rating for PPACA — now at 55 percent disapproval, 39 percent approval — all because of a special lie.

“President Obama’s misstatement, ‘If you like your health plan, you can keep it,’ left a bad taste with a lot of people,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “Nearly half of the voters, 46 percent, think he knowingly deceived them.”

But whatever. That’s not important. The young Gen Yers have probably never heard of that, or pay attention to it. The news is so overrated. But, OMG, have you heard about the free birth control?